This book presents an archaeological challenge to explain the ethnohistory of the Ainu of Japan and reappraise the Ainu culture. This challenge is posed by the existence of iron-working hearths in excavated Ainu villages dated before 1667. The Ainu culture has hitherto been thought of as largely a hunting, fishing and gathering society. The archaeological evidence, however, suggests something more complex, and leads to the hypothesis that this labelling of the Ainu may be a historical, academic and political distortion. Iron-working technology was chosen as the focus because technology is a form of social expression as well as a techno-complex. Taking account of earlier research, this book provides a more detailed understanding of the emergence of Ainu cultural identity and social change among the Ainu by examining past cultural contact and interaction between the Ainu and outsiders, and by drawing on Ainu oral tradition as well as archaeological material.